R510501A. Poems (Boston, 1850).
The Christian Parlor Magazine, 1 May 1851, pp. 145–146.
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 17.
Charles lamb in one of his essays once divided men into two classes, those who borrow, and those who lend: following his example, we are disposed to be as narrow in our classification of poets, whom we divide into those who are original and those who are not; the word original, however, by no means fully or correctly explains our meaning. Many poets are strikingly original in thought, whose mode of embodiment is as old as the hills. The common sense of mankind is disseminated from stereotyped plates, and so is more than half of all the different branches of English literature. There is no marked or radical difference in the style of Pope, Grey, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Southey:—difference there certainly is in expression, in the length and turning of periods, and a thousand minor points, but they all leave the same impression on the mind of the generality of readers, as far as their style is concerned. Not so however with Tennyson, Miss Barrett (now Mrs. Browning), and Robert Browning himself. The peculiarities and excellencies of the two former are mostly understood and appreciated, but the latter is comparatively unknown, especially in America, where his works have only been reprinted during the past year. We should not be surprised if he never attained general popularity anywhere: he is not a stereotype man, but bold and original, not to say bizarre in everything that he attempts. He evidently hold critics in utter contempt. He does not write for them nor for the world: he wants a “fit audience though few.”
His plays are puzzles to the mass of readers: devoid of what is generaly considered plot and action and delineation of character, they seem, and to a certain extent are, obscure; but the obscurity lies as much in the reader as the poet: he needs a metaphysician to understand him thoroughly: he delineated the motives and working of the minds of his various characters without any reference to anything else, or anything tangible or earthly: he places himself in their different situations, and thinks as they would; thinks metaphysically, deeply, passionately, but not actively: he never acts: there is no plot in any of his plays that would for a moment be tolerated on the stage: his characters are not men but minds, they wear no clay around them: “Paracelsus,” one of his earliest efforts, is a conversational, we can hardly call it a dramatic poem, in which he endeavors to depicture the struggles of a noble but restless nature, smitten with a thirst of knowledge, but scorning from the first human love. His bursts of exultation and confidence as to the divinity of his mission—his account of the growth of his desires, and the certainty of their success—his after depression and fear, uncertainty and disappointment, are finely but abstractly drawn: Paracelsus is perhaps too much of a logician, but we must remember that he is a student and dreamer.
The following passage is not over poetically expressed, but philosophically true:—
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate’er you may believe:
There is an inmost centre in us all
Where truth abides in fullness; and around
Wall upon wall the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect clear perception—which is truth;
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Blinds it, and makes all error, and To know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
The lines below must have been written in the full flush and pride of youth:—
Make no more giants, God!
But elevate the race at once! We ask
Just to put forth our strength, our human strength,
All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted—
See if we cannot beat thy angels yet!
“Pippa Passes” is one of the finest efforts of the modern muse: the idea of the play is poetical and beautifully executed—Pippa, a poor o[r]phan girl whose life is spent in the drudgery of a silk mill, has a holiday, and goes through Azolo, singing snatches of old songs and hymns. In different parts of the town, different characters have met for good or evil, and just at the turning point Pippa passes in the street singing something applicable their needs and desires—exerting as it were a mesmeric influence over those around her. The lines quoted below have been pronounced the greatest instance of imagination in Browning’s works, “their fine audacity carrying us back to the elder period of the English drama.”
Buried in woods we lay, you recollect,
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead, [p. 146→]
And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burst through the pine tree roof—burnt here and there
As if God’s Messenger through the close wood-screen,
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me.
From a conversation between some poor girls we select the following passages, whose pathos and country-feeling have always made them favorites with us:—
first girl.
Spring’s come, and summer’s coming, I would wear
A long low gown—down to the hands and feet—
With plaits here, close about the throat, all day:
And all nights lie, the long cool nights in bed—
And have new milk to drink—apples to eat,
Deuzans and junetings, leather-coats—ah I should say
This is away in the fields miles!
third girl.
Say at once
You’d be at home—she’d always be at home!—
Now comes the glory of the farm among
The cherry-orchards, and how April snowed
White blossoms on her, as she ran: why, foul!—
They’ve rubbed out the chalk-marks of how tall you were,
Twisted your starling’s neck—broken his cage,
Made a dung-hill of your garden—
first girl.
They destroy
My garden since I left them?—well—perhaps!
I would have done so, so I hope they have!—
A fig-tree curled out of our cottage wall—
They called it mine, I have forgotten why,
It must have been there long ere I was born:
Cric—cric—I think I hear the wasps o’erhead,
Pricking the papers strung to flutter there
And keep off birds in fruit time—long coarse papers,
And the wasps eat them, prick them through and through.
“Colombe’s Birth-day” and “The Blot on the Scutcheon” are our favorites of all the plays. The first if full of chivalrous sweetness and subdued passion, the growth of which is equal to anything in Shakspeare. The last is full of love and sorrow, and contains the only flesh and blood characters that Browning has yet given the world. Dickens considered it the finest poem of the century. We know not where to find more sweetness, more intensity of love, more of the feelings of youth and first grief, than is scattered through its simple and pathetic scenes. We never read it without tears.
The minor poems—“Dramatic Lyric” he calls them—are, perhaps, the most peculiar and bizarre of all Browning’s writings. They are for the most part lyrical in expression, but always dramatic in principle, and the utterances of so many imaginary persons, rather than the author’s. Some of the mare [sic] singular enough—“The last Duchess” has been pronounced by one of the first dramatic poets of the age, to be the finest piece of dramatic acting of the century—the story, and peculiarities of the story teller, are developed without any apparent effort: in this respect Browning stands unrivaled, and may challenge comparison with the old masters of the stage.
“Count Gismond” is a fine piece of narrative verse, exquisitely managed. “The Soliloquy in the Spanish Cloister” is very characteristic of the author. “Artemi’s Prologueizes” reads like a translation from the Greek tragedians: the blank verse is sounding, stately, and simple. “The Bishop orders his tomb at St. Praxed’s Church” is fully equal to the “St. Simeon Stylites” of Tennyson, though differently treated: “Porphyria’s Lover,” “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix,” “The Italian in England,” “The Englishman in Italy,” “The Flight of the Duchess”—and “Saul” are all fine, and characteristic poems.
“The Pied Piper of Hamelin” is a specimen of Browning’s diablerie and humor. The following is a good specimen of its style and versification:—
rats.
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
“Meeting at Midnight,” with which we must close our extracts, has many of the characteristics of Tennyson, and gives the feeling of “the place and hour.”
i.
The grey sea, and the long black land;
And the yellow half moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that toss
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.
ii.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears:
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro’ it joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
Reviewed:
Poems (RB), Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850.
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